I’m going to go ahead and assume there are exceptions for tapping someone on the shoulder, pulling them out of the way of an oncoming train, performing the Heimlich or CPR, holding them back from a fight, et cetera, before the point of the post is derailed by smartasses coming up with obvious exceptions to “Never,” a word which never doesn’t have exceptions.

The society got awfully touch-phobic. Which gets quite ungood when you’re the kind that needs to touch an object to perceive it as real; without the haptic interface, on audiovisual only, it can be quite as well a VR sim instead of a real thing or person.